Inflatable air-bags, for use in occupant constraint systems in motor vehicles, are conventionally formed from woven fabrics. These fabrics typically comprise two sets of fibres, known as warp and weft fibres, which are interwoven with one another and arranged approximately at right angles to one another. A coating is often applied to such fabrics, and the coating provides the function of decreasing the permeability of the material, and maintaining the fibres in their intended positions.
It is advantageous to reduce the weight of an air-bag as much as possible. This will not only reduce the quantity of material required to construct the air-bag, thereby reducing the cost of the finished item, but will also reduce the weight that must be transported by a vehicle which contains the air-bag.
Focusing on the fabric of an air-bag, there are two principal options for reducing the weight of the air-bag. One is to reduce the weight per unit length of the fibres used to form the fabric (conventionally measured in tex (1 tex=1 gram per km) or decitex). The other is to reduce the density of fibres per unit area of the fabric (conventionally measured in sett, i.e. threads per cm, counted in as the number of perpendicular threads that are encountered along the length of one of the warp or weft fibres).
If fibres having reduced decitex are used, it is found that the tear and tensile strengths of the fabric are both reduced. This is the case even if the number of threads per unit area is increased to compensate, as each individual thread will break relatively easily.
If the spacing between the fibres is increased, two undesirable effects typically result. The first is that there are larger gaps between the fibres. If the fabric is not coated, then this will increase the permeability of the fabric. If the fabric is covered with a coating, then the coating material will come under greater stress in the larger regions between the fibres when the pressure difference across the fabric is high. Clearly, this leads to an increased risk of rupturing of the coating material.
Secondly, as the sett is reduced, the wrapping angle of each fibre around adjacent fibres is reduced. This reduces the inter-fibre friction, which is fundamental to the formation of the stable fabric. In addition, as stress is applied to the fabric, individual fibres can slide laterally with respect to adjacent fibres, a phenomenon known as combing. For an uncoated fabric, once again this will increase the permeability of the material. For a coated fabric, this combing movement places additional stress on the coating, which will generally lead to micro-ruptures at the elongated interstices.